


Atypical

by LaVieEnRose



Series: The One Where Justin Loses His Hearing [86]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Asthma, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pneumonia, Recovery, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 19:53:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16793674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: Set two weeks or so after "Stop." A follow-up of sorts to "Typical," this time from Brian's perspective. What a day looks like right now.





	Atypical

_7:13 AM_

I woke up to Justin smacking me in the fucking face, little, ineffectual hits with the backs of his hands. He's always been squirmy in his sleep, and I've learned to sleep through it and just roll around with him for the most part, but ever since he got sick it'd been worse. He was still wearing oxygen to sleep, or at least he was allegedly, because he kept taking off his fucking cannula flailing around. I reached up, eyes, still closed, and felt around his nose to see if it was still in. No. Of course. And then he sneezed on me for thanks. Christ. The pneumonia had largely cleared up, but he was still dealing with a sinus infection and infections in both ears, one of which was pretty nasty. His home nurse said in anyone else they'd be worried about hearing loss from it. Wouldn't that have been kind of hilarious? Justin never loses his hearing, we get through all this shit with his seizures, and in the end he goes deaf from a bad cold.

He sniffled and batted my hand away from his face. “Itchy,” he mumbled.

I scooted up the bed and kissed his neck until he opened his eyes. His skin was warm, but that was to be expected. He'd been running fevers at night pretty regularly, but they usually went down once he was up. Or as up as he was getting these days, anyway. Mostly he was just rotating between naps in various places of the apartment: the couch, a nest of pillows on the floor, the bay window, the bathroom floor one time when he was too tired to make it back to bed.

 **Up,** I told him.

He made a _hmmph,_ noise and rubbed his face.

I got up and smacked his legs with the pillow. **Up, you lazy twat. You wake me up before my alarm, you're gonna jerk me off in the shower.**

**Back to sleep.**

**Up. You need breakfast before I go. Hazel demands I hand you over with a full tank of gas. It's in the rental agreement.** Hazel was his nurse who stayed with him during the day. I liked her, as nurses go—I'm generally not a fan—and she and Justin got along pretty well for a relationship that consistented mostly of pointing and nodding and medicating.

Speaking of. I counted out pills while he gave some very wheezy version of a yawn, handed him a bottle of water, and took his temperature out of the less-diseased of his two ears. He swore it didn't hurt, which was...fucking hard to believe. **101.2,** I told him. **Good. Same as yesterday morning, right?**

He nodded and yawned again. I lifted his chin and gave him a slow kiss until he had to pull away to breathe.

 **Shower,** I told him. **You're gross.** He wasn't—he gets all warm and soft when he's sick and...look, it works—but he needed the steam first thing in the morning. The antibiotics took care of all the fucking bacteria in his lungs, but they were still clogged all to shit and his breathing sounded like when you scrape ice off your fucking car. He had to just keep coughing until they were clear, no way around it, but it was painful for him and he had enough time gathering enough air to even do it in the first place. The steam helped.

I helped him up and put a hand under his elbow on the way to the bathroom, but he could make that distance okay on his own, really. I kissed his cheek and nudged him towards the scale before I started the shower.

He stepped on it and said, “Up a fifth from yesterday.”

**That's nothing.**

**It's a fifth.**

**You haven't even pissed yet.**

**Stop micromanaging my dick.** He stepped into the shower and shook his hair in the spray.

“Mmm.” I kissed him. **Nothing micro about it.**

We made out for a while under the spray, but he got shaky fast, so he sat down on the stool I finally thought to buy and I let him jerk me off like the charitable fucker I am. I needed to find some tactful way to ask Hazel when he'd be up for blow jobs again, but this worked for now; Justin was all sleepy and sexy, and I finished fast, well before the steam hit his lungs and he started coughing. **Good boy,** I said, and he made a face like he didn't love the compliment, as if I was going to buy that, before he doubled over and coughed for a long, long time. I washed my hair.

**

_7:40 AM_

I set a plate of scrambled eggs and toast and a protein shake in front of Justin. **Leave your nose alone. Clean your plate.** Hazel, working in tandem with the hospital, had him on a 3500 calorie a day diet to try to put back on some of the twenty-two fucking pounds he's dropped over the past two months, which any regular idiot would be overjoyed to follow, but he was still having a lot of trouble with his appetite, not to mention with just finding the fucking breath control to eat. I gave him a heating pad to hold onto his bad ear and drank a cup of coffee while I leafed through the paper. **DOW's up 410 today,** I said.

“About time.”

**Speaking of...think it's about time we start looking for a new place? Maybe this is a sign.**

“A one day bump in the stock market is our sign?”

 **When did you become such a cynic?** It was going to be a long process anyway, listing the apartment, finding a buyer. And it would be at least half a year before he'd be healthy enough to move.

He waved his fork at me dismissively. “I don't want to move.”

**I could be closer to work, you could get your bath tub...**

“Anywhere closer to work is gonna be farther from my studio, and Evan.”

**Evan's not going to be in Washington Heights forever, so help me God, and if we move to the East side we're closer to Molly, Emily and the baby, Derek and Daphne...work...**

**Studio.**

**We can get a place that's big enough for studio space inside of it.**

“Oh, we cannot.”

I laughed a little. **Okay, maybe not, but we can find you a new studio.**

**I like my studio.**

**You'd also like a bath tub.**

He pushed his plate away.

 **Justin.** He'd barely fucking touched it.

**If I eat any more right now I'm gonna throw up. I told you I can't stand eating first thing like this.**

**Not first thing. Drink the shake, at least.** I still hadn't gotten used to this role reversal, me nagging him over food.

**I'll work on it.**

**You gotta keep your strength up.**

He sneezed and cleared his throat. **For my long day of coughing?**

 **Yeah.** The doorbell rang, and I finished my mug and went to answer the door. Hazel was already scrubbing herself with hand sanitizer up to the elbows. See, I told you I liked her. I knew Justin didn't like having a nurse here, but he was being a good sport about it. I couldn't keep staying home, and he didn't have nearly the immunity required to come to the office with me, let alone ride the fucking subway, but he just wasn't up to being alone yet. He couldn't get around the apartment well on his own and he didn't have the energy to make himself food or keep track of his meds. He just needed a hand right now, and if it happened to be from someone with seizure training, so much the better.

“Hey, sugar,” she said. Every time. “How's he doing today?”

“He's good. Got him to shower and he ate a little. I think he's feeling better than yesterday.”

“Fever this morning?”

“Yeah, and his breathing's bad, and he says he's nauseous. He's sneezy and that ear still looks like a fucking nightmare.”

She set her bag down. “Did you try doing a compress?” She was always leaving me with homework.

“Yeah, last night. I don't know if it helped.”

“All right, we'll keep trying.”

I went around to the living room side of the counter and helped Justin off his stool. **I gotta run,** I said to him.

He nodded heavily and waved to Hazel, and I tilted his head up and kissed him. He pulled away after a few seconds and rested his hand on my chest. “Need to lie down,” he said. He was wheezing pretty badly and his eyes were already falling shut. He'd been awake for almost an hour at that point, and that was about as long as he could go in a stretch.

 **Yeah, that's fine. She's used to you being boring,** I said.

He yawned and coughed. **Fuck off.**

 **Have a good day, dear,** I said. **Cough up lots of shit for me.**

 **Kinky,** he said, flopping down on the couch.

**

_8:42 AM_

I picked up my coffee from Emily's desk on my way into Kinnetik. **Jenkins contract?** I asked her.

**On your desk. Isabel wants to know if she can meet with you at ten instead of nine-thirty, she's running late.**

**What time's the stemware meeting?**

**Eleven.**

**Yeah, okay.**

**How's the patient?**

**He's fine.** My standard response, because how the fuck else do you describe what's going on? He still couldn't have visitors, not until his blood tests were a little better, so there was no point in worrying them about him when there was nothing they could do but give him time and space. And besides, I mean, Jesus, compared to how he had been? He was fucking phenomenal. He was the fucking picture of health. **How's Molly?** Molly had been living on Emily's couch for two weeks now and was showing no signs of stopping. We'll get to that.

Emily wrinkled her nose. **She's going out with some friends tonight, so that's good. Does Justin know anything about...?**

**He does not, and we're going to keep it that way. He has enough to worry about.**

**Okay, but she can't stay there forever. My sex life was _just_ getting back to normal. Now I don't know how loud I can be.**

I shook my head a little, admirning. Reminiscing. **Deaf sex is a miracle.** Justin was gonna be well someday. Someday. Someday.

**Don't I know it.**

I cleared my throat. **Anyway, Molly's slept on my couch too. Trust me, she's heard worse.** I raised my coffee cup to her and headed towards the stairs. **Tell billing I need those estimates for next month before this meeting! They get until ten now.**

**On it.**

I took the stairs down to the basement, doing my best to ignore the pitches of three different guys asking me for more money or more time off or could Kinnetik do a campain for their shitty business idea, and waltzed my way into the art department. I could smell the paint and glue as soon as I walked in, and I stopped and took a deep breath through my nose. It's like a damn sedative.

I waved across the art room to get Evan's attention. **Fifth of a pound.**

He blew air out of his mouth. **That's nothing.**

**He's trying.**

**Breathing?**

**Still bad. Fever's low.**

**How's that gross ear?**

**So fucking gross. You have a card?** Evan had been making Justin Get Well cards everyday, just little jokey things, but he's a good artist so they were usually pretty nice. And Justin liked them.

**Not yet. Are you going home for lunch?**

**Nope! Whole day! Office! Working!**

Evan gave me a skeptical look that I...might have completely deserved. It was possible that I hadn't yet spent a whole day here without having to go back to the apartment for some reason or another. Sue me, Justin's a demanding little shit, and he gets on Facetime with those eyes and that cough of his and I'm only a fucking child of men, here.

There were some guys here installing our new copy machine, and I made eyes at one of them on my way out of the art department and got a blow job half a stairway up by the electrical closet. I closed my eyes and let my mind wander.

**

_10:04 AM_

“So sorry I'm late,” Isabel said. “My daughter has the flu and...it's a whole thing. How's Justin doing?”

“He's fine,” I said, and after the meeting I scrubbed myself raw.

**

_12:08 PM_

My office phone rang a bit before lunch. A rarer occurance than you might think; Sam, our receptionist, knows I don't ever fucking want to talk to anyone. Most people get told I'm in a meeting, or, if they're really persistant, they get moved on to Emily and the relay service, which usually scares them away. People will fucking run for the hills before they'll have a slightly awkward interaction with a Deaf person. Remarkable.

I picked up my phone. “Kinney.”

“Schmidt,” he said, in what I assume was meant to be an imitation of my voice. “You see the DOW?”

“Sure did.”

“Could have sworn you'd be calling me begging to sell something.”

“Eh, not yet. Saving up for a pony for Justin.”

“How's he doing?”

“The real reason you've called.” I put on the voice and everything, but I can't say I was all that bothered by people wanting to know how Justin was doing. He almost fucking died, and I was not in the slighest bit interested in letting them call Justin with their neuroses about it, nor was he really up for keeping up with his communications yet. He'd send a few texts before bed every night and Facetime with the baby a few times a week. Besides that he was off the grid. It was just too damn much for him at this point, trying to keep up with everything, trying to fucking manage all the worry coming at him from a dozen directions. Which was fine. I'm the managerial type, if you haven't noticed.

“It's all anyone here's talking about,” he said. “So how's he doing?”

“He's good,” I said. “He's doing very well.”

Ted sighed. “I'm so relieved. Will be a big relief to see him.”

“That's not gonna be for a while.”

“Well, Thanksgiving's in two weeks, so I figured...”

I actually laughed out loud. “We're not coming to Thanksgiving.”

“You're not?”

“Jesus, absolutely not.” Obviously getting on a train or a fucking airplane with him was out of the question, but even if I drove us there, there's no way he had the immune system or the fucking stamina to deal with all of them for the holiday.

“Christmas?” Ted said.

“I would be shocked.”

“I don't understand,” Ted said. “You said he was doing well.”

“He is, he's...” Jesus, how do you fucking explain this? How do you explain that two weeks before you were watching him die on your bathroom floor so at this point you're not really broken up over the fact that he's not up for a fucking vacation?

Well, if you're talking to Theodore Schmidt, you use numbers.

I said, “In a healthy person who gets pneumonia—so we're talking your average fucker, your yous or mes—you can see cloudy lungs on a chest x-ray six months after they get over pneumonia. Six months, and their lungs still aren't completely clear. And he hasn't had a single chest x-ray in all of this, we don't even know what kind of long-term effect this might have for his lungs, if there's any kind of scarring or permanent damage, because we can't get him to a hospital, we can't even get him through the door right now. He's got all these concurrent infections we still need to take care of, and he's so immunocopromised that fighting those off is a whole 'nother ordeal. So he's all day dragging around this congestion in his lungs, barely able to breathe, trying to fight off this other shit...he's _tired._ He's so fucking tired. I can't bring him home for Thanksgiving. I can't even bring him out to the fucking sidewalk. He'd fall asleep and then he'd die.”

“So...how long are we talking?”

“There might not...be the kind of nice little endpoint you're looking for. He's on oxygen at night now, he won't always be. He's taking antibiotics, he won't always be. His immune system will come back, I don't know when the fuck. His lungs will clear up, if they're not scarred. He'll get some energy back. But this is measured in months. Maybe a year.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“What about his career?”

“It'll wait.” What other fucking choice was there? Get up, Justin, start painting, the art world is forgetting you? If Justin could make himself well because he was scared of wasting time, the kid would never be sick a day in his life.

“So you're just going to do this for a year?”

“I'm not _doing_ anything,” I said, and okay, maybe I was getting a pissed off at that point, sue me. “I'm sitting at my desk right now, I'm living my fucking life, he's living his. We're just not coming home for Thanksgiving.”

“All right, well, you better be the one to tell Debbie. I'm not doing it for you.”

“Okay, thank you. I don't have enough on my plate right now, so that's good.”

“I thought everything was all hunky-dory.”

“Theodore.”

“All right, all right. I do need to go over this budget proposal with you,” he said, and then he talked my ear off with that boring shit for twenty minutes while I got steadily more and more irritated, and when I finally got off the call I did a lap around the offices to cool myself down and barked at a few interns and got scolded by Emily and when that didn't take the edge off, gave up and called my little human Xanax.

He was awake, though I woudn't really have felt bad about waking him if he wasn't; the one upside of all this was that insomnia was a thing of the past. Kid was falling asleep in the middle of sentences. He had the nebulizer mask on and he was curled up in the armchair under his favorite blue blanket. He gave me a little wave and then tried to paw at his nose even though a fucking mask was there.

I breathed out and felt everything just...I don't know. Get quiet, no pun intended. **Hey, Sunshine.**

He coughed a little. “Hi, Brian.” His voice was muffled through the mask, soft.

**You doing okay?**

He nodded and adjusted the blanket, and just doing those two damn things exhausted him so much that he rested his head against the wing on the chair and panted for a bit.

 **You look nice,** I said.

He smiled at me.

**Have you eaten?**

**A little.** He sneezed and rubbed his chest. **Nothing tastes right.**

**Because you're stuffed up.**

**Yeah.** He gave this small sigh. **I was going to call you soon, actually. We got test results.**

 **You're just bringing this up now?** Hazel had taken his blood a few days before and sent it in so we could find out what the fuck his white blood cell count was. Normal was over four thousand. When they first diagnosed him, at his neurologist's office, he'd been at 380. They said he was lucky he wasn't getting infections just from the normal bacteria you have in your fucking mouth.

He'd been on meds now for two weeks to try to bring his white count up, so we were hoping...

He said, **Yeah, because it's shitty news.**

**How bad?**

**620.**

Damn it. I sighed.

 **I'm sorry,** he said.

**Don't fucking apologize, you're trying. You okay?**

**I'm fine, I just...I'd like to leave this fucking apartment someday.** He couldn't go anywhere until he was above a thousand or have any company—with masks and gloves and a strict no-touching policy—until eight hundred.

 **At least it's higher,** I said.

**I don't want to talk about it anymore.**

**Yeah, okay.**

He shrugged a little. **What's up with you, rough day?**

**Just annoying.Ted had to call and talk my ear off about Pittsburgh budget shit. Martin messed up the contracts for Eyeconic so I had to get those redone and Madge is pissed.**

He watched me, his eyes closing.

I laughed. **You're falling asleep.**

**No I'm not.**

**Sure. Try to eat.**

**Try not to kill Martin.**

After I hung up I sat there for a minute, tapping my fingers on the desk, and finally I mumbled, “Oh, fuck it,” and went down to the art department. Evan had his head down, sketching on one of the drafting tables, his tongue in his cheek in concentration, looking so much like Justin when he focuses that it made my chest hurt a little for my boy who couldn't stay awake long enough to draw a stick figure. Christ, this month had taken a toll on my game face.

I knocked on the drafting table and he saw my hand and looked up. It took him about half a second to read my face and roll his eyes.

 **You are so predictable,** he said.

**Yeah. You have a card?**

**I have a card. Hang on.**

I nodded and tapped my foot impatiently.

**

_1:24 PM_

Hazel gave me the same look Evan did. “Don't you have to work one of these days?” she said while I hung up my coat and set a box on the counter. “What the hell do you executive types do?”

I went to the kitchen and started scrubbing my hands. “I'll have you know I made an intern cry today. Duties filled. How's he doing?”

“He's good. Walked from the bedroom to the kitchen on his own.”

I swished some Listerine around my mouth and spit. “Six twenty?”

“I was hoping for higher too. And he's fighting me on food. I think he's getting less scared of me, so that's a bummer.”

I gestured toward the box. “Eclairs.”

“Steaks would be better.”

“He'll eat eclairs.”

“Y'know, I still think some IV antibiotics would have him feeling so much better. I don't know how he's not screaming with that ear like that.”

“I agree with you, but the PICC line sounds like a fucking death trap.” That's an IV line that goes from a vein in your arm up through your superior vena cava—basically, right into your heart. It lasts a lot longer than an IV into a weak vein like the back of your hand or some shit, but...“He gets an infection from that, he gets endocartitis, then what.” He had to shave with an electric razor so he wouldn't risk cutting his skin, he spiked a fever for two days and had his whole arm swell up from the blood draw, but sure, let's stick something into his heart. More importantly, Justin didn't want to do it.

“Then you get off the internet, that's what.”

“He can't get into the hospital to get it inserted anyway, and you keep being a disappointment who can't do it here.”

“Okay, I show up here one morning and you've built me a surgical wing, I'll give him a PICC line.”

“See, now we're negotiating.” I dried my hands. “This is what the executives do all day, by the way.”

“Oh, go feed him some eclairs.”

Justin was asleep in the armchair, exactly where he'd been when I hung up the phone. I grabbed the box from the bakery, pulled up the ottoman to sit on, and kissed Justin's warm cheek. It took him a couple slow blinks to successfully open his eyes. Fucking precious as shit.

“Heyyy,” he said. He scooted over a little, and I rolled my eyes at him but crammed myself into the arm chair as best I could. He slung his legs over my lap and rested his head on his chest. “You're supposed to be making us money.”

 **Nobody there was telling me how amazing I was. Here.** I handed him the box.

He opened it, then snuggled against my shirt. **Brian, you're amazing.**

**That's more like it.**

He slowly worked his way through an eclair while I just...decompressed, I guess, hanging out in the armchair with my cheek resting on top of his head, listening to his scratchy breathing. He got tired halfway through and turned himself into me, panting, and I massaged the palm of his bad hand. I knew I needed to get back to work soon, but fuck, he was warm and sleepy and he seemed sick today, and his legs on top of me were making it kind of hard to move.

 **You don't have to worry so much,** he said. **Really, I'm okay. I'm sad about the number, I'm not like...I'll be fine.**

**I'm not worried.**

**You keep coming home in the middle of the day.**

**Yeah, well, I keep having crappy days.**

**Oh, yeah, what's wrong with them?**

**I have to talk to people, advertising is boring, my boyfriend's sick...**

He gave me a look, and I wrinkled my nose at him.

 **You can't be comfortable all balled up like this,** I said. **Let me put you back in bed.**

He shook his head. **I hate staying in bed all day.**

I lifted his chin to kiss around his neck, and he hummed and smiled.

 **You have to go,** he said.

 **Yeah, I know.** I put my hand on his chest and listened to his junky damn wheezing. **You want oxygen?**

He shrugged.

 **Yeah, that means yes.** “Hazel?”

She brought the oxygen tank out here and got him set up, and I put drops in his ears and made out with him for a while and then got the hell back to work.

**

_4:12 PM_

Daphne called right as I was finishing up an email to Brown. “Hey, you have a second?” I said. I'd texted her a few hours ago asking me to call me when she had a chance.

“Maybe sixty. What's up?”

“I've been thinking about what we talked about.”

“Okay.”

“I think...yeah, I think if you can, postpone.”

“Yeah?”

“His white blood cell count is 620.”

“Christ. How the fuck did he fight off that pneumonia?”

“At this point I'm thinking sheer force of will.” I leaned forward onto my desk. “If it was just a matter of him still being tired from the pneumonia, he'd work around that, but at this point I don't know if he's going to have the immune system for travel and a crowd six months from now.”

“Okay,” she said. “I'll talk to Derek.”

I said, “If there are fees or anything—”

“Stop.”

“No. You're rescheduling for us, we want to pay.”

“Do you realize how much money his mother has? We're not hurting here. You want to worry about something? Be worried about how the fuck you're going to tell Justin we're postponing.”

“You could always do it for me.”

“Yeah, you're right. I have to rearrange an entire wedding, but I definitely have time to reassure Justin about it.”

I groaned.

“So...how are you going to tell him?”

“What do you mean? I'm just going to fucking tell him.”

“You think he's going to be fine with that?”

“No, he's going to fucking hate it, but what's the other option, tell him no, your mom just couldn't make it that weekend so we're pushing it forward six months? He's sick, he's not stupid.”

I heard Daphne talk to someone on her end, then she said, “I've got to go, we have a car accident coming in.”

“All right. Break a...well.”

_6:25 PM_

“I like you getting home this early,” Justin said. He was sitting at the counter, propped up on his elbow while I heated up pork chops, sniffling into a tissue now that he was done sneezing fifty times. “I should almost die more often.”

**Is that even possible?**

“It's important to have goals. Don't overcook those.” He sneezed four times and fussed with his sinuses. “Oh my God, enough.”

**Do you think you even have allergies right now with your immune system this shot?**

“I don't know. Feed me some walnuts.” He leaned his head against the wall looking at me warmly, and I reached across and the counter and batted at his cheek.

**Go sit at the table, I'm almost done here. You need a hand?**

“Let me see.” He got off the stool and was wobbly immediately. “Yes, definitely.”

I got him into the kitchen and at the table and poured a glass of water for him and a beer for me. I loaded his plate up with meat and vegetables and sat down across from him, and we chatted about our days—reading and sleeping for him, you already heard the spiel for me—for a while. He took a break halfway through eating to sit with the nebulizer, and I got up and cleaned the kitchen and sent a few texts and checked the time.

“Can I have the other eclair for dessert?” Justin asked me.

**How old are you? Why are you asking me permission?**

“You bought them.”

**Because I'm trying to fatten you up, Twiggy. Go wild. Finish your dinner first.**

He shoved a fork full of string beans into his mouth, and I finished Lysoling every surface known to man—I'd even fucking spray down Evan's cards before Justin handled them—and sat back down at the table. He offered me a sip of his protein shake and I snorted and shook my head. Those things are nasty.

I took a deep breath and said, **I talked to Daphne today.**

**Everything okay?**

**Yeah.** You can't tell him she was interrupted by some big car accident; he'd be on the internet in thirty seconds looking up the victims and crying like he knew them. Kid's gonna fucking choke on his own heart someday. **So she and Derek decided to postpone the wedding.**

**I told you I didn't want that.**

**I know.**

**Did you tell her that you think they should?**

**Yeah, I did.**

He wheeze-sighed and sat back in his chair, taking a pissed-off pull on the nebulizer.

 **I know,** I said. **I get it, okay? You don't want to cause a fuss, you don't want to be a complication. But they don't want to get married without you, and that's their choice, not yours. And you can't be ready in six months.**

**Yes I can.**

**Justin.**

**Six months is _so long,_** he said. **I'm going to be better in six months. I have to be.**

You have to understand that there's a kind of baggage there—a kind of _need_ —that I don't get, that I'm fucking never going to get. The closest experience I have is when I had cancer, and that was ten thousand years ago and lasted two months, and I had a whole fucking horde of people telling me exactly what to expect and when I was going to feel better. Justin was flying blind here, and all he had were ten people, all but two of them who he couldn't even be in the same room with, telling him he had to be patient and tough and more fucking careful than is literally biologically possible, or he was going to die. Of course he needed this to be fucking over. He was scared to wake up every morning. He was scared to breathe. He was scared to touch me. And now he had to sit there and accept that that wasn't going to be over six months from now?

Yeah, he did, but don't pretend that's not a monstrous thing to ask.

So I said, **I know this is frustrating.**

**You have no idea.**

**You're going to sit there and be a bitch to me? I'm looking out for you.**

**Fine.** He turned off the nebuilzer. “Tell me why it's fine for me to still be like this six months from now.”

 **No one's talking about not making any progress between now and six months,** I said. **It's just going to be slow. It's fucked up, but we have to just be patient.**

“We.”

I sighed. **You.**

He pulled his legs up onto his chair.

 **Everyone's willing to wait,** I said.

**Not everyone.**

**Can instead of sitting there being pissy about people fucking rescheduling a wedding for you, maybe you take a second to appreciate that people love you enough to _reschedule a wedding for you?_ Not everything is a fucking insult. Would it goddamn kill you to let people be nice to you? Does it really have to be the end of your fucking world every time?**

He stared me down.

 **Everything is going to be the same six months from now,** I said, and maybe you're the fucking genius who sees the trap I'd just set and walked right the fuck into. **Everyone is willing to wait for you.**

He slammed his palm down on the table and said, “Bullshit,” and yeah, that's when I got it.

 **Justin,** I said, after giving him a minute, but he shook his head and looked away. I checked my watch, cursed under my breath, and got his attention. **I have to go.**

**Okay.**

I stood up and put my plate in the sink. **Finish eating and be in bed by the time I get back, okay?**

**Yeah.**

**Justin.**

**I'm fine, go.**

**

_7:12 PM_

**Running late,** Emily said.

**Give me a break, I'm a tight schedule here.**

**You're the one who won't take a night off.**

**It's not for me.** I waved to Gwen and headed to the living room, where Janie was sitting on her mat, picking up rubber bands and dropping them into a cup. She was signing to herself with her other hand—not really saying anything I could decipher, just babbling, but it was fucking cool to see her working it out.

I stomped on the floor until she looked over—she just learned that one recently—and she gave me that fucking smile and crawled over. **There she is, there's my girl.** I let her crawl over and then scooped her up. She smelled like baby shampoo and her thin curls were still damp. I kissed her cheek three times and squeezed her until she squeaked. **How are you?**

She signed something that was maybe a proto-version of **Cup** and pointed to her mat.

 **Yeah, I can see that. You want to show me? Come on.** I brought her back to her mat and sat her down.

 **Put her by the table,** Gwen said. **Maybe she'll show you her new trick.**

 **Yeah, I told Justin I'd try to get it recorded.** She won't do it on Facetime; she gets so fucking excited when she sees Justin that I'll she'll do is squeal and show him her toys. I set her down by the table and put her cup and rubber bands on it and said, **Hey, you want to get them?** but she made a noise like an angry pterodactyl, so I said, **All right, jeez,** and got them back down for her. She peacefully took all the rubber bands out of the cup and handed them to me one by one.

 **So Molly really did go out?** I said to Gwen.

She nodded. **I think it's the first time she's gone anywhere besides to class. You've got to talk to her.**

**This is girl shit.**

**No, you pig, this is Justin shit. This is on you.**

Jesus, what the fuck isn't. **Yeah, okay.** I set one of Janie's rubber bands up on the table, and she looked up at it thoughtfully.

 **How's he doing?** Gwen asked me.

**He's...today was rough. His lungs were giving him more trouble than they have been, and he got tests back and he's not improving as quickly as he wanted, and he found out Daphne and Derek are going to push the wedding back for him and he's...you know. Being very Justin about it.**

Jane signed **Mom** at Emily as she walked by and pointed to the rubber band on the table.

 **You want it? You can get it yourself,** Emily told her.

 **It must be fucking awful feeling like that for this long,** Gwen said. **And knowing it's not going away any time soon.**

**Oh, absolutely, it's a fucking nightmare. I just don't know what the fuck he wants me to do about it that I'm not already doing.**

**Probably nothing,** Gwen said, and I didn't have a lot of time to just...sit there and fucking let that sink in, because she pointed at the baby and I grabbed my phone. Sure enough, Jane grabbed the edge of the table and pulled herself to standing.

Emily kissed the top of her head. **Did you get it?** she asked me.

**Got it.**

Emily waved at camera. **Hi, Justin. We miss you.**

**

_8:48 PM_

Justin had done the dishes when I got home, which I guess was impressive, but really it just meant he'd probably worn himself the fuck out doing something I could have handled in a minute and a half. He was in bed, coughing and crying a little bit into his pillow. I couldn't touch him until I'd fucking sanitized myself and I figured he'd probably want a minute anyway, so I stepped on the creaky floorboards by the bed so he'd know I was there and went and took a shower and brushed my teeth. I crawled up behind him on the bed after, trying not to drip on him so he wouldn't get chilled, and dropped kisses on his neck and shoulders until he rolled over and looked at me.

“Hey,” he said softly.

I lay my finger gently over his lips. **Too healthy for that shit now. Here.** I helped him get the oxygen cannula in place. He let me.

 **How is she?** he asked.

**She's real good. Come here.**

He backed into me and I rubbed his back for a while, feeling those wheezy breaths leak out of him. He sniffled and wiped his eyes on his sleeve every so often.

 **I know you don't want to talk about it,** I said after a while. **But I'm so damn sorry you feel this bad.**

He rested his cheek against my hand.

**I can't fucking imagine not knowing when you're going to feel okay again.**

He cleared his throat. **Did she pull up tonight?**

**Yeah, you want to see?**

He nodded, and I helped him prop up against me and pulled the video up on my phone. I watched him instead of the video, the smile that broke over his face when she stood. **God, she's so strong.**

I put my nose in his hair. **Yeah, she is.**

**She remembers me, right?**

**You talk to her every day, come on.**

**What if she thinks I don't care about her because I don't come to see her?**

**I think that's probably a little sophisticated for her. She only stood up because she wanted a rubber band.**

Justin laughed and cried a little bit, and I nudged his head into the crook of my shoulder and massaged the back of his neck.

 **She's waiting for you,** I said after a minute. **She's not going anywhere. Nobody is.**

He swallowed and nodded a little.

 **Take your time,** I said.


End file.
